Bloomsbury Counterfactuals: Paths of the Might have Been

Counterfactuals are everywhere. But what are they? And how do they both help and hinder us in our daily lives? Counterfactuals are works of imagination which express something which hasn't happened or simple isn't the case. For example, 'if kangaroos didn't have tails, they would topple over.' or the contemporary usage of things like YOLO and FOMO. These kind of 'what if...?' questions are a creative and dynamic aspect of being human. However, they are also speculative and relative and can become problematic when dressed up as 'facts'. Christopher Prendergast provides us with the first introduction to counterfactuals as a phenomenon which points to their importance and potential but also their serious limitations within a 'post-truth' society. While counterfactuals are a key part of mathematical and scientific enquiry, this is the first book to explore their meaning right across the humanities including literature, philosophy, classics, psychology and ethics (to name but a few). Counterfactuals takes us on a timely and urgent journey to understanding how and we we live in a counterfactual world. Review Christopher Prendergast's wide-ranging and philosophically informed investigation of counterfactuals is a revelation. Counterfactual conjectures, we learn, wend their way through centuries of Western thought on numerous topics: the vagaries of chance, the mysteries of time, and the fragility of personal identity. They link metaphysical speculation to utopian longing and the pain of personal regret. Prendergast's encounters with them reveal both their ubiquity and their strangeness.In this witty and erudite book, Prendergast offers a startling range of reflections and analyses of the realm of possibility, bringing his command of sources from fiction and science, history and philosophy, to bear on fundamental questions of reality and truth, persuasion and evidence. The work offers an indispensable guide and caution to many of contemporary society's most pressing obsessions and errors: the strange appeal of fantasy and the power of the fake. In raising so clearly the ways to deal with the puzzle of what might have been, whether with regret or with relief, this is a major accomplishment of a literary critic and scholar at the top of his game.Prendergast uses the rich idea of counterfactuals as a point of departure for a deft exploration of key works of literature and philosophy. This is an intellectually adventurous and highly stimulating book. About the Author Christopher Prendergast is a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge and a Fellow of the British Academy. He writes for the London Review of Books and the New Left Review.